Christopher Leow has spent more than a decade working in Singapore’s burgeoning urban agriculture industry. We chat to him about his unique journey, why growing in the city continues to gain ground, and the need for bravery when it comes to cultivating your own urban garden.
To say that Christopher Leow has many strings to his bow would be an understatement.
An aerospace engineering graduate, the Singapore native has also done stints as a Navy diver, barista, chef, and café owner.
But it’s the farming life that ended up being his true calling.
The former head of greens and general manager at Edible Garden City has carved out a name for himself as an expert voice on all things urban agriculture – going on to lead the 1-Arden Food Forest project, widely considered to be the world’s highest rooftop farm.
As if that wasn’t enough, Chris also founded an insect farming venture Future Protein Solutions “because crickets are one of the most resource efficient ways to farm protein”.
But, back when he got started, opportunities in the field were limited.
Agricultural Inspiration from Around the World
“Singapore didn’t have even a single agriculture college or course. And so that’s when I went traveling.”
Chris travelled the world WWOOFing (pursuing Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) before finding himself in Australia.
“I landed in New South Wales, where I stayed with the family that was living off grid, practicing permaculture and growing all their own food. It really inspired me.”
Arriving back home – his interest in farming well and truly piqued – he sought out ways to get involved in the small urban agriculture scene, which, despite a slow start, was beginning to bloom.
Chris volunteered with Edible Garden City, a social enterprise in the heart of Singapore growing produce using soil-based methods, as well as ComCrop, an early leader in urban aquaponics.
Both initiatives were still getting off the ground, and Chris had to make ends meet doing other jobs.
“It wasn’t viable as a career. I was still in food. I did different things. I was a chef, I was a ramen consultant, I started a coffee cart business.”
But, within a couple of years, he was approached by Bjorn Low, founder of Edible Garden City, with a proposal to build Singapore’s first closed-loop farm on the site of a former prison – Queenstown’s Citizen Farm.
“He said, ‘Look, I’m starting up this new flagship farm that would incorporate waste-to-fertility concepts. It’s socially driven as well; we want to be socially inclusive, by working with people with disabilities. Would you want to help me start this project?’ That was really the start of my career as an urban farmer.”



Image credits: The Freestyle Farmer / Christopher Leow
A Singapore Story
Chris’s trajectory has coincided with a growing interest in urban farming, as Singapore has increasingly moved to embrace the potential of growing in the city, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We definitely faced some food supply chain challenges. I’m sure most countries did. And when that happened, I think it was a wake-up call for us.”
The need to address issues of food security is a central part of the government’s Green Plan 2030.
As 100 per cent of the city’s inhabitants are urbanised, Singapore relies heavily on imported food. And, with traditional farmland accounting for just 1 per cent of the small city-state’s land mass, it’s had to turn to innovative ways to reach its goals.
Alongside increased investment in agri-food production technologies, research, and education, Singapore is actively unlocking unused urban areas for agricultural production – from rooftops and carparks to disused buildings.
These efforts are supported by the Agri-food Cluster Transformation (ACT) Fund, which provides funding for local farms “to build and expand their production capacities and capabilities”.
But Chris says the interest isn’t just coming from government.
“There’s been a huge growth in the ground up movement … community gardeners on a hobbyist level, school level wanting to learn about where food comes from are also becoming a lot more interested in growing food and there’s more decentralised food production … I think there’s quite a holistic push.”
The Foundations of a Rooftop Garden
With his abundance of know-how, Chris has been called on to help convert plenty of spaces atop people’s homes and “unexpected places” into edible gardens and urban farms. He knows of one hospital that was able to grow “10 per cent of the leafy vegetables” that it uses.
But often, the structures themselves need retrofitting before a rooftop farm can be put in place.
“There’s a lot of challenges because the buildings are not designed for certain systems and general access.”
That has proven to be a complex process of negotiating with “different authorities, different agencies to ensure that it fits within their regulatory codes”. Especially for historic buildings, which have to retain their aesthetic, or where developments threaten to add too much weight or block air ventilators, etc.
But there is movement, and plenty of enthusiasm for it, because decision-makers are waking up to the multiple benefits of urban farms.
This includes Singapore’s hospitals, where institutional support for the elderly tends to be handled; decision-makers are integrating community initiatives in their care programmes.
“That’s a big part of these urban farming ideas, because they want social interaction. If the elderly can grow the food, be outdoors and physically active, that’s a very good benefit.”

Educating Generations of Urban Farmers
The educational landscape is shifting too. Singapore has introduced a lot of policy in recent years that supports macro farms – instrumental for the emergence of the city’s agricultural industry from almost zero just 11 years ago, Chris explains. As part of the Green Plan, schools are establishing their own sustainability plan, many including forms of on-campus agriculture and visits to urban farms.
Chris has gone into many of these secondary schools to help them set up. “I teach them about food culture and then we start planting together. We learn about composting. We built irrigation. We grow everything from scratch. It’s not been done before. We broke ground.”
Low-threshold access to financial mechanisms that enable this – like the SG Eco Fund – are evidence of the states’ commitment: “If you’re doing a sustainable project that has community elements in it, you can get funded.”
This seems to be normalising farming for Singapore’s population, where attitudes are shifting for the better.
Chris says that, just a decade ago, children would never have wanted to become farmers because it’s “dirty work” and for older generations it’s seen as “the worst thing you could do as an educated person”. But agriculture in the city, schools, and socially is turning that around.
“This is good. They see value, they respect it.”


Image credits: The Freestyle Farmer / Christopher Leow
Cultivating Change
Singapore’s Green Plan had included the aims to produce enough food to fulfil 30 per cent of the nation’s nutritional needs by 2030. Chris tells us that Singapore’s ‘30 by 30’ initiative would have required the nation to build an agriculture industry from scratch.
This initiative has failed, he explains, because the government had mostly sponsored farms specialising in high technology agricultural methods. And citizens were “price sensitive” to the higher costs of goods grown in Singapore.
“Locals are just not willing to pay more than they do for what’s imported. Locally, the cost of production is higher, for reasons like higher rental rates and higher labour costs than where we get our imported vegetables from. So the economics of operating a farm in Singapore are quite challenging.”
As a result, market uptake ended up being too low, and many of these farms “have gone bankrupt”.
Chris offers a harsh summary: “So commercial vegetable farming in Singapore is pretty much dead.”
He hopes getting more people in the garden will go some way to raising awareness about the true cost of food. It’s to that end, perhaps, that, despite a full plate, he continues to run a volunteer community garden in his local neighbourhood – Nutopia.
“I want to share my knowledge and experiences with others. There’s a lot of people interested in doing this, but they just lack the knowledge of how to take the first or second step – or sometimes they might have the knowledge, but they lack the confidence to do it.”

Healthy Vegetables – In More Ways Than One
That’s one trait that Chris doesn’t seem to lack, and just as well. It has given him the resilience to rise up and carry on when hit by setbacks.
In August 2023, Chris shut down his cricket farming startup, Future Protein Solutions, as investors had to pull out after the Singapore Food Authority kept delaying regulation to approve insects for human consumption. “They were a little bit cautious because of public feedback,” he informs us. It was finally rubber stamped in summer 2024, but by this time Chris had invested his energy into a new company – The Freestyle Farmer.
The Freestyle Farmer
Our CityChanger offers urban agriculture coaching for those who want to start growing from scratch.
It’s Chris’ direct response to the lack of knowledge about urban farming.
“I realised that the end user in the commercial building was often too busy or didn’t have enough bandwidth to seriously utilise the produce or build a very strong relationship with the grower, and it often became very transactional.”
He offers the example of a hotel that “may have this lovely farm to table programme on their marketing collaterals”, but in reality, the chef doesn’t “have the desire to truly work closely with the farmer” and so that strong working relationship never occurs. Many such projects, Chris says, “ended up becoming showpieces for ESG, and it felt like such as waste of energy”.
But with this venture – the coaching – he aims to change this picture by helping keen urban farmers connect with their crops.
Over a series of personalised sessions, Chris teaches every aspect of grow-your-own, from building planters and assessing soil types to understanding irrigation methods and using professional agronomy tools to identify – among other things – levels of sun exposure and what crops it suits. “This approach involves the client at every step of the way,” Chris informs us. “It empowers them with the knowledge and strategy to be self-sufficient in maintaining a thriving edible garden.”

Chris Leow, TV Show
This universal knowledge on all aspects of urban farming is gaining Chris a great deal of recognition.
He now presents a documentary on Channel News Asia called ‘Growing Wild’, where he explores how people globally are growing food in a holistic and sustainable manner.
He has also given plenary talks about the impact of Urban Farming and recently “gave a talk in Geneva in June to a group of leaders from developing countries about how to have good governance in a healthy food system”.
It’s at events like these that our CityChanger comes away reassured that other countries want urban farms just as much as he wants them for Singapore – but frequently don’t know where to start.
“You don’t need fancy designs,” Chris points out. “You just need the steps. You just need good governance. You just need to tell the policymakers how it’s done in Singapore.”
A Bumper Harvest: Advice from an Urban Farmer
Despite all the expertise he’s gained over the years, Chris says he’s still picking up new knowledge along the way.
“The learning never stops … Even though I’ve been doing this for maybe a decade, I still feel like a beginner. Because it’s only through practice that you realise what you don’t actually know.”
Chris’s advice to his volunteers, and to those interested in urban farming in general, is simple: just start.
“You probably won’t know what you’re doing at first, and that’s okay; just enjoy the journey. Especially in a place like Singapore, where we chase instant success, where it’s all about results, I think there is a fear of failure or fear of trying. My suggestion is to manage your expectations. Expect yourself to fail for the first year. You will gain confidence as you gain knowledge, so don’t give up.”
He also warns us that “technology will not solve all our problems”.
Cultivating food, he suggests “should be approached as a craft” rather than being treated as a commodity, supported by a culture of taking great pride in growing the best produce.
“We have been looking at food production the wrong way. We want quick results but have unrealistic expectations. Worse, there is no focus on developing and supporting the entire ecosystem of farmers. It is not only short sighted but lacks a holistic approach. On a practical scale, cities like ours will never produce enough just due to the nature of real estate prices and scarcity of land.”
So, while urban farming may never provide 100% of Singapore’s nutritional needs, it offers much more than food security.
“The transformative effects I’ve seen for community, it’s really quite amazing.”
Interested in learning more about Chris’s story? His book, The Freestyle Farmer, is a memoir detailing his unlikely journey to being “an urban farmer in a land-scarce city”.
Note: additional writing has been contributed to this article by Karl Dickinson for CityChangers.org.